Hurray, Congress!

The other day, Orrin Hatch, the senior senator from the University of Utah athletic department, told RealClearSports.com that there could be legislation to crush the Bowl Championship Series if a new round of hearings doesn’t achieve his level of satisfaction.

And now, Rep. Edolphus Towns of New York wants to open a House Oversight and Reform Committee heatring on Sammy Sosa’s apparent perjurious (and largely non-English) testimony from 2004.

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Orrin Hatch whips out Rachmaninoff’s First Movement of the Utah fight song

Fine and dandy. We’re not of the mind that Washington has no place in American sport because we’ve seen how lack of regulation works in the banking industry. When there’s a wrong and nobody else can right it, that’s what the law is for.

But because our faith in Congress’ ability to finish any job it starts is so low, especially in the field of play-for-pay, we also recognize what comprehensive wastes of time these two hearings are going to be.

The hearings that sprung from the Mitchell Report are but the latest example of how Congress’ institutional ADD and intraparty spit-fighting makes these hearings a testament to grandstanding, gasbagging, and all the other true by-products of a life in public service.

For instance, in Hatch’s interview with RealClear, he finished with a profound and laserlike response to a lightweight end-of-interview question about the Heisman Trophy with the deathless phrase, “You better watch Max Hall at BYU.” Yeah, no pandering there. It just reminds you that if Utah hadn’t been the latest BCS squeeze-ee, he really wouldn’t give much of a damn about this at all.

As for Sosa, it certainly looks like he lied through his incisors about steroid use to the politicians in 2004, and you would think that such practiced fibbers would have spotted it then and there. But of course, they did nothing because, well, that’s what they’re inclined to do. They want to be seen, not seen doing something, which is why they’ll find a way to do nothing here as well.

And that’s why people laugh when Congress gets involved in sports — because they know it isn’t really involvement at all, but some sort of C-SPAN/ESPN face-time crossover that helps with uninvolved voters in election years. You know, the much-coveted “Didn’t I see that guy talking with Bob Ley and Nia Long?” vote.

And this latest round of time-wasting-for-time-wasting’s-sake is why they will laugh again. They know Congress has things they should do but don’t, so they spend time not doing anything about the BCS or steroid-fueled perjury. It is the way of their people, and always will be.